The Lost World of Hawkins, Indiana

Someone on my Facebook feed posted a really interesting article on Stranger Things and the enduring pop cultural appeal of '80s nostalgia. Unfortunately I can't find it now, but one of the more notable tidbits was the observation that the current wave of '80s nostalgia, which traces back to the late '90s, has now been around almost twice as long as the '80s themselves.

In truth, it's phased in and out, but never gone away. Now, in 2017, it is in full bloom: we've gotten a remake of It, a sequel to Blade Runner, an '80s themed entry in the Thor movie franchise and, most importantly, a second season of Netflix's unabashedly nostalgic sci-fi horror show, Stranger Things. Meanwhile, synthwave--the overtly retro '80s music that I make (shameless plug)--is more popular and visible than ever.

I've long wondered why I'm so attracted to '80s nostalgia, why I've always been attracted to it, but also why I'm so particularly attracted to it now. The simple answer is that I grew up in the '80s, but that's only part of the story. I was a teenager in the '90s, so you might think I'd be nostalgic for that cultural moment. I probably will be at some point, but I'm not right now, not really. So there's clearly more going on there, and I suspect that's the case for most people. What follows is an attempt to make sense of it all, with special reference to Stranger Things.


An Evolving Aesthetic

In 1997, VH1 debuted what would become its signature program in the post-video age: Behind the Music. Though not limited to '80s musicians, episodes that featured that decade's more ridiculous figures were instant hits. In 2002, VH1 adapted the British program I Love the '80s, which surveyed the decade's pop culture landscape a year at a time. (I Love the 70s and I Love the 90s followed soon thereafter.)

These programming decisions both reflected and contributed to the wave of nostalgia for '80s pop culture that, according to Simon Reynolds, cast its shadow over the entire decade. Indeed, if you look at independent music in the early '00s, it's positively drenched in the stuff: from the "punk funk" aesthetics of LCD Soundsystem, Franz Ferdinand and Datarock to the new wave revivalism of Ladytron, Fisherspooner and Scissor Sisters. And it wasn't limited to music either. The cult TV show Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) was, in a sense, the Stranger Things of its day. And Napoleon Dynamite (2004), though not technically set in the 1980s, had a distinctly '80s nostalgic aesthetic. So why does the current round of '80s nostalgia feel different?

In 2005, VH1's Michael Hirschorn had this to say about the '00s wave of '80s nostalgia:

[It] applies to a specific kind of Gen X, self-mocking, slightly ironic thing. For this group of people, you can't give them straight nostalgia of the sort of baby- boomer, "everything was wonderful and great when we were kids" feel. People Gen X and younger know that things weren't that great. We never thought that Motley Crue was saving the world. We identify with them passionately, but with a certain wink.

The ironic take still holds, to a degree, but it's never been the only thing going. Revivalists from the ''00s, such as Daft Punk and Ariel Pink, described their approach in decided unironic terms, as less an attempt to recapture a specific sound (with the addition of a wink and a nudge) as to recapture the "blissfully indiscriminate" way in which music was consumed at that time, something that evaporated with the decline of radio and MTV's switch to scripted programming. And if anything, the current wave of retro enthusiasm feels much less ironic and much more earnest than it did in the '00s.

There are plenty of haters, who dismiss the current wave of '80s nostalgia as insipid or emblematic of cultural exhaustion (for example, here and here). But I think those people vastly miss the point, namely, that '80s nostalgia in 2017 is purposive, and says more about where we are today than it does about the moment it portrays. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the lost world of Hawkins, Indiana.


The Lost World of Hawkins, Indiana

When I first starting watching Stranger Things, I was struck by how familiar Hawkins, Indiana felt. I grew up in a place more or less like that, an old Northeastern mill town. It was a twenty minute drive from a small city, and just under an hour from a big one. But it was also a self-contained universe. Most people worked in factories, making calculators, school uniforms or costume jewelry. Others worked in supporting industries--one friend's father owned a small metal treating company, which served the factories. There was a vibrant main street, and a great diner that got so packed on Sundays you could think the whole town was there. There was little crime, and it felt like everyone was looking out for everyone else. It was the kind of place where you knew the police and firefighters by name. The real locals, by which I mean those with roots in the community, probably knew them all from school or little league.

A lot has changed since then. Most of the factories have closed, with the work they once did (and the work that supported them) outsourced to cheaper labor markets. Main Street, like so many across the US, is a dilapidated shadow of its former self. The town as a whole is still okay--its proximity to the aforementioned cities meant it was able to transition from a place that made things to a commuter suburb. And the diner's still there. Many factory towns have not been so lucky.

But when I see the town of Hawkins, Indiana, it feels like I'm looking back at the place I grew up in, as it once was, but which no longer exists in the same form. This feels important. Stranger Things isn't just a celebration of pop culture from a previous moment, but a window into a lost world--one where things that have become deeply uncertain are rendered certain again.

The appeal of peeking into this world makes a lot of sense when you consider the political trend, both in the US and globally, toward economic populism. Strikingly, this trend is evident across the political spectrum, though it manifests differently on each end. Both sets of populists want to turn back the clock on several decades of globalization, outsourcing and the financialization of the economy. They just apportion blame differently. Left wing populists are angry over the dissolution of what George Packer calls "the Roosevelt Republic," a 50-year period of state-regulated economic security and egalitarianism, which was broken up in wake of late '70s stagflation to encourage faster growth, which in turn has disproportionately benefitted the richest of the rich. Right wing populists, by contrast, blame mass immigration for driving down wages and labor unions for driving out the factory owners. Both blame free trade for making it cheaper to build things abroad, though left wing populists also stress its negative effects on emerging markets.

The window to Hawkins shows a place where none of these things have happened yet. Though deregulation was already well underway by 1983 (when season one of Stranger Things takes place), the effects were not yet evident. We are looking at a place that hasn't experienced the financial crises of 1987, 2000 and 2008 or the cancerous spread of Walmart--a place where economic security and a middle class standard of living are still assumed. I imagine that most people who watch Stranger Things, regardless of their politics, find this comforting.

Another aspect of Hawkins that strikes me is its whiteness. I don't mean that in strictly racial terms; after all, Lucas is black, as are some other town residents. Rather, I mean it in cultural terms. No one in the town listens to hip-hop, funk or r&b, just rock and country. Aside from this season two's California transplants, no one seems to come from anywhere except Hawkins. There are no immigrants. There doesn't even appear to be a Chinese restaurant.

I also recognize this aspect of Hawkins from my own childhood, when we had to drive to the city for decent Chinese, or to the big city for Thai. That started the change in the '90s, when the area grew more diverse. In 1983, it wasn't very diverse at all. As part of a multilingual household and with an immigrant mother, I was basically the diversity.

This is not something I'm nostalgic for. Even at a young age, I found the hegemony of the monoculture oppressive. The '90s felt like an awakening to the world, with all the promise that entails. I am decidedly not nostalgic for the days when everyone died where they were born.

But I'm sure other people are. In 2016, pundits spoke at length about economic anxieties related to uneven globalization, but surveys have shown that more people have what you might call cultural anxieties. In extreme form, these manifest as racism, xenophobia and other exclusionary ideas that divide people into categories and then rank them by acceptability. More often, though, it isn't so much about accepting people from other backgrounds as accepting other cultural practices as valid and normal. It is possible, from this view, to accept individual people who look different as long as they don't act different. As long as they don't challenge the hegemony of the monoculture.

It would not surprise me to find out that some people are attracted to this element of Hawkins, Indiana, and more specifically, its portrayal of a world before multiculturalism and a time when the myth of strict assimilation still ruled supreme. Hawkins, one could argue, is a utopia for the culturally anxious, a place where the few non-white residents are perfectly comfortable within the monoculture, which in turn makes everyone perfectly comfortable with them. Put another way, Hawkins is exactly what people mean when they use "I don't see color." It means, "I don't want to think about difference."

I don't fault the Duffer Brothers for portraying Hawkins this way. Not everything has to center race, and I appreciate the fact that Lucas is treated as just another kid by everyone in the town. But as I examine my own feelings for this show, and for the place and time it portrays, I have to be honest about what I'm looking at, and how that makes me feel. Stranger Things is portraying my own lost world accurately, but there are things you lose and wish you could get back, and other things that are better left in the past.


The Lost World of Personhood Beyond Politics

Yet there are plenty of things I do wish we could go back to. Among those, the days when political identities were not so much a defining feature of your personhood as an element of color. Now, politics have always mattered, as have political disagreements. I remember the strong differences of opinion in the '80s: on welfare and taxes, on nuclear weapons and the threat of mutually assured destruction and so forth. But life was not as polarized as it is now. My dad and my friend's dad used to joke on election day that they were canceling out each other's votes. Can you imagine that now--not only saying it, but saying it to a friend and both of you thinking it's funny?

The shift in attitudes is widespread. As Pew noted in a 2014 report:

The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.

Partisan animosity has increased substantially over the same period. In each party, the share with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled since 1994. Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”

The causes of this effect are multiple. Partisan gerrymandering has disincentivized median voter strategies, while unlimited campaign financing means politicians are more beholden to the wishes of individual donors than their districts. Concurrently, the decline of the newspaper and rise of both shrill partisan media and social media all contribute to the emergence of parallel echo chambers, which generate internal solidarity and views of the other as intrinsically threatening. What political polarization has done, then, is transform every political disagreement into a zero sum game, when in past days it might not have been treated as such.

You might be wondering where I'm going with all this; Hawkins, after all, is not a political world. In the series, the only political markers in the town are a solitary Reagan/Bush '84 sign on Mike's yard, as well as his father's bland statement to the men in black, "we're all patriots here." But that's exactly the point. We know very little about anyone's politics--no one even talks about it. So instead we form our opinions on the goodness of people through other means. And that's when it struck me: can you imagine deciding whether you think someone is a good person or not without knowing their political worldview? This was possible at one time, but it feels weird and alien now.

Some issues bely compromise--of that there can be no doubt. But today it often feels like everyone is fighting everyone on everything, and are so hideously polarized that they can't even think of the other side as equally human. Hawkins provides a comforting antidote to that paradigm, a glimpse back to a moment when people weren't as likely to other the political other. We don't know who Hopper or Joyce vote for; all we know is that they do right by people.


The Lost World of Childhood

Most strikingly, Stranger Things captures the freedom accorded to children in days past, and the lack of freedom accorded today.

I'm a parent now, and I'm clear-eyed about of how different it is to raise a child now compared to when I was a kid. Some things have improved--there's much more awareness of bullying, for example, and parents (dads especially) are a lot more involved in day-to-day child rearing than they once were. And, as mentioned above, I see immense value in exposing children to different cultures--something much easier to do now than before, especially if you live in a Hawkins. But I do lament the fact that my kids don't have the freedom I had as a child. The freedom to roam, explore and learn by doing.

Partly that's because I no longer live in a Hawkins. Since college, I've chosen to live in big cities. I've chosen that path on purpose; I find them more stimulating and exciting. But big cities come with crime and traffic, and their populations are transient. There is more to worry about, and fewer people around who you can trust implicitly. It is not possible to simply let your kid roam free at a young age the way you can in a small town. If you did, someone might even report you to the police.

But it's also cultural--not in the sense of ethnic or religious culture, but the prevalent culture of the moment. The zeitgeist. In many countries, the US included, the lives of children are increasingly structured. As journalist Hanna Rosin writes:

I used to puzzle over a particular statistic that routinely comes up in articles about time use: even though women work vastly more hours now than they did in the 1970s, mothers—and fathers—of all income levels spend much more time with their children than they used to. This seemed impossible to me until recently, when I began to think about my own life. My mother didn’t work all that much when I was younger, but she didn’t spend vast amounts of time with me, either. She didn’t arrange my playdates or drive me to swimming lessons or introduce me to cool music she liked. On weekdays after school she just expected me to show up for dinner; on weekends I barely saw her at all. I, on the other hand, might easily spend every waking Saturday hour with one if not all three of my children, taking one to a soccer game, the second to a theater program, the third to a friend’s house, or just hanging out with them at home. When my daughter was about 10, my husband suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult. Not 10 minutes in 10 years.

It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods in the U.K., shows that in 1971, 80 percent of third-graders walked to school alone. By 1990, that measure had dropped to 9 percent, and now it’s even lower. When you ask parents why they are more protective than their parents were, they might answer that the world is more dangerous than it was when they were growing up. But this isn’t true, or at least not in the way that we think. For example, parents now routinely tell their children never to talk to strangers, even though all available evidence suggests that children have about the same (very slim) chance of being abducted by a stranger as they did a generation ago. Maybe the real question is, how did these fears come to have such a hold over us? And what have our children lost—and gained—as we’ve succumbed to them?

Rosin presents a theory of how this happened: the largely irrational fear of child abduction, combined with well-intentioned attempts to reduce the risks children face in their daily lives (for example, a largely ineffective campaign to reduce playground accidents). The end result is a safer, though in some ways less stimulating environment. Hawkins, by contrast, is a place where kids still roam free and only go home for meals. In so doing, it shines a light on all our misgivings with overprotective helicopter parenting in 2017. 

You may or may not buy Rosin's argument; I do, at least in the abstract. I see my own childhood in a place like Hawkins and lament that my kids may never experience those endless days spent on bikes, exploring in the woods or climbing around house construction sites. All done as a matter of course, of course--as long as we were home for dinner. But in practice I find it very hard to let go in that way. Clearly, so does Rosin, and I assume this is true for many parents who grew up the way I did but now find the world changed around them. We appreciate the things that have changed for the better, but we mourn the loss of things we once took for granted. And so, we look through the window into the lost world of Hawkins, Indiana, a place we can see but not touch. 

Endless '80s

Stranger Things exemplifies the purposive dimensions of '80s nostalgia in 2017. But how long can it last? By all rights it shouldn't have lasted this long. Only, rather than fade away, it appears to have metastasized. 

The fact is we are no longer locked into pop culture moments the way we once were. Recall that the '80s themselves were nostalgic for both the '50s and '60s, embodied in everything from The Stray Cats to The Wonder Years. Stranger Things is, itself, an homage to the way these earlier decades were reinterpreted in the '80s, through the form of the late '50s/early '60s monster movie that's really about fear of communism or McCarthyism. And then there's Steve's haircut:

The genius of the '80s was to mash its nostalgias up with a heady dose of futurism and neon. At a time when the future is scary as shit, the dead futures of past times can be comforting, even when they themselves are reimaginings of even older futures. Meanwhile, the microgenrefication of music and other entertainment media mean that popular culture can sustain all nostalgias at any given moment. Plus there's the fact that a lot of retro stuff is actually pretty creative. Synthwave, for example: this isn't '80s music made today, but rather a modern style of music that draws as much on incidental soundtrack and corporate music as it does on pop or indie stuff.

Or compare the pastiche of references in Stranger Things to those in Ernest Cline's 2011 novel Ready Player One. The references never overwhelm the narrative in Stranger Things, nor are they ever made explicit. In other words, if you haven't seen ET, Poltergeist or Aliens, you won't know the winks and nudges are there. Rather, they are window dressing on what is, at its center, a compelling human drama. Ready Player One, by contrast, hits you over the head with its unending stream of '80s references--delivered through a series of encyclopedia-style infodumps that are as jarring as they are unsubtle. Now, I realize that Ready Player One has its legion of fans; but I've tried to read it twice and in found myself unable to suspend disbelief. With Stranger Things, by contrast, I practically live in Hawkins for each 45 minute episode.

All this is a longwinded way of saying that, while it's possible that '80s nostalgia will recede from popular view, I don't see it going away. Not as long as we still dream of lost worlds.


***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Fright vs. Fright: The Fly

Fright vs. Fright is a series of comparisons between classic horror films and the lesser-known works that inspired them, or subsequent remakes that stand on their own merits.

The Film: The Fly (1958)

The Plot: Starting with a bang, The Fly introduces us to Helene Delambre as she smushes her husband Andre in a hydraulic press, then calls his brother Francois and tells him what she's done. Not sparing a thought for Andre, Francois comes over to make sure Helene's all right. The police arrive, and after careful sleuthing, determine that yes, Helene did turn her husband into a blood puddle in the press. But why??? After a nice long rest, Helene recounts the story of how Andre had begun experimenting with transporting matter from one place to another, lost the family cat in the ether, but successfully transported a guinea pig, and then accidentally scrambled his own atoms with those of a fly when he tried to send himself through. Up until the last possible moment, there was some hope that a certain "white-headed fly" (presumably a fly with Andre's head, since Andre's body now sported a fly head) might be the key to reversing the experiment. But Andre was becoming more beast than man rapidly, and asked Helene to smush him before he lost all reason and turned dangerous. Dangerouser?

The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent: This is not the first time I've tackled The Fly for this site, but it's been several years, so I revisited my old review to see if my opinion had changed any over the last five years. It hasn't. The Fly has a few indelible moments, but those are linked together by a whole lot of not much. And not yet in his horror heyday, Vincent Price is largely wasted. That said, this movie is not without its charm, and if you have kids you'd like to introduce to creature features, this is not such a bad way.

Remade As: The Fly (1986)

How It Stacks Up: This re-imagining is just a flat-out better movie than its predecessor. While the broad strokes of the plot are the same, David Cronenberg and co-writer Charles Edward Pogue sifted the original film through a sieve and got out everything extraneous — including the little kid at the center of the original who keeps asking, "When's Daddy coming home?" What remains is a tight drama with only three characters, which could really happen on stage (and would no doubt be really cool). I could spend a long time talking about all the things this movie does right, and how great Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis are in it, but it should be sufficient to say, as our reviewer Molly wrote when we first looked at these films in a different context, "this movie is a disturbing, lasting experience." She's right.

Worth a Watch? Slam dunk, must-watch for horror fans.

Fun bit of connective tissue: Jeff Goldblum also appeared in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, last week's installment in this series.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012. Perennial watcher of dozens of horror movies each October. Avoider, in general, of telepods, unless they're from the Angry Birds universe.

DYSTOPIAN VISIONS: Brazil

Dossier: Brazil [1985, dir. Terry Gilliam]

Filetype: Film

File Under: Statist Dystopia

Executive Summary: Sam Lowry is a cog in the massive bureaucracy of the retro-future. He daydreams frequently, about rescuing a damsel in distress. Due to a mistake in the endless paperwork, a man is wrongfully arrested as a terrorist, and subsequently dies. Lowry, tasked with fixing the error, meets a woman who looks just like the one he dreams of rescuing. They both come into contact with the real wanted man, Tuttle, and are branded enemies of the state.

***Spoilers for a 31 year old movie*** He and Jill, the dream-girl lookalike, manage to have a romantic weekend before they are apprehended. Lowry is taken to be tortured, but Tuttle and his gang break in and rescue him, which results in a surreal escape that sees him reunited with Jill. We learn, however, that this is all a dream as his mind has divorced itself from reality and he is still in the torture chamber.

Dystopian Visions: Government, information and consumerism are all major themes of Brazil. Whereas most dystopian fiction is marked by a distinct lack for the vast majority of people, Brazil has excess. People are concerned only with what they have, or can have, and are numb to the sufferings and injustices of others. The Government is bogged down by paperwork, a reality unto itself, where only the proper filing and process matters- not the truth, or if a thing is actually accomplished.

Utopian Undercurrents: You can have what you want in Brazil- If you have the paperwork. And the paperwork for the paperwork. Filed with the proper office.

Offices.

Level of Hell: Six(?). I wrestle with how bad it is, exactly, which is part of the problem. This isn't Children of Men or Mad Max, where it is a struggle to get the barest of necessities, but rather a world made so cumbersome and claustrophobic that everything is pointless. As I've said in other pieces, I find that the more distasteful. Objectively, though, this is middle-of-the-road bad.

Legacy: I may have a sort of skewed perspective on this, since I first saw Brazil when I was super young, and it had a major impact on me. It is a film with a powerful message, but it's presently with this sort of Monty Python-ish humor and absurdity, which drives it home even more.

In Retrospect: There is a lot to love about Brazil. As I mentioned earlier, it's powerful and funny all at once. It looks dated now, with the colors and sets that mark it very much as an 80's film, which, depending on your preferences, make it better or worse. I appreciate it's originality, where a lot of dystopia takes itself seriously, Brazil does not.


Analytics

For its time: 4/5
Read today: 4/5.
Oppressometer Readout: 8/10.

NERD MUSIC: Interview with Vampire Step-Dad

NERD MUSIC is excited to present an interview with Vampire Step-Dad, a high-concept synthwave act by an up-and-coming artist in the scene. [Disclaimer: The G mastered Vampire Step-Dad's last two releases.] Please join Vlad and I as we talk music, nerdery and '80s pop culture! And if you like what you see/hear, you can support Vampire Step-Dad by purchasing his music via Bandcamp, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter, where he is very active.

Thanks for "sitting down" with me! To begin, how did you get into making synthwave music?

Glad to be "here." To answer your question, I first discovered synthwave from a video on YouTube called "MiniDrones Blew Up My Toys!" It's this awesome video where RC cars and mini quadcopters are fighting, using explosions and it's all stylized like a Michael Bay movie. But good. Anyway, they used "Hang 'Em All" by Carpenter Brut, and I was instantly in love. This was just before EP III came out, so just after finding him, he released EP III and I was blown away. It sounded familiar but different than anything I'd heard before. It took me a month or two to look into what style of music it was, and that's when I discovered Synthwave. I was instantly fascinated and had to try and make some myself.

One of the things I love about Vampire Step-Dad is the concept, the idea that the music is made by the protagonist in an Alf-like sitcom. How did you come up with that?

Well, I knew I needed something really original. At first I was thinking of a "name" style ..um...name, like "Skip Tracer" or something like that, but I realize it had two flaws: 1. It was already taken by a country band 2. Personal names are easily forgotten. "Was it Chip Tracker? Skip Lazer? I know it was a name of some sort..." So I had to avoid that route. The most important thing to me was that it screamed "80s" all on it's own. There was plenty of trope names already, nights, neon, lazer, miami...it had all been done to death. And on top of that I've never really been able to take myself too seriously, so I didn't want to try to put on airs of badassness.

So I thought hard about what I experienced the most out of the 80s. For me, it was the TV shows. I loved 80s action movies, but if I'm honest, most of what I watched was family sitcoms. Cosby Show, Family Ties, Alf, as you mentioned. So I knew I wanted to go that route. Expounding on this, the 80's had a lot of non-nuclear families, like My Two Dads and Three Men and a Baby. So that was another facet that said "80s" to me. And LASTY, you know... monsters.

Zombies are overdone, werewolf didn't roll of the tongue very well, and Frankenstein's Monster would leave you too limited. So, Vampire + Step-Dad. It fit all my needs. It sounded 80s. It was memorable, because it makes you immediately start imaging what he'd look like and what situations that could cause. And it aligned with my sense of humor very well. Of course, I didn't realize "Stepdad" is the proper way to spell it until after I got my logo designed, so I had to embrace my own idiocy and run with the dash. (Yeah, that's right, dad jokes. brace yourself.)


You explore different aspects of '80s pop culture in your music. Is this a conscious part of your creative process, or something that emerges organically?

Very, very conscious. My attraction to synthwave is all about the nostalgia. I totally respect the guys making old sound new (like Carpenter Brut) but for me, I want to sound like someone forgot to release the soundtrack to an old movie you've not seen before. Also, with the way I write, sporadically and with no real theme, it serves me well to just go with what's inspiring me at the moment, and see where it takes me. This is why it surprises me when people say my release have any sort of coherence. But hey, I'm not going to argue with anyone that's liking my stuff. But yes, ultimately, I want the first few chords of a song to scream "THIS IS AN 80S SONG! GET IT? DOESN'T THIS FEEL SOOO 80S?" Some people think this is a path that leads to a dead end, but oh well. Maybe I'll shift gears when I feel like it. Right now: EIGHTIES.

When I first heard "Green Berets for Breakfast," I felt like it was straight out of a Stallone and Schwarzenegger buddy flick that was never made, but should have been. A live action Contra. Or Ikari Warriors.

Which version? Original, or Redux? "Berets" was on my first EP, and the response I got with it was very lackluster. But I knew I had something good there. The original has a very slow start, and doesn't do anything special for a good long time, so I can totally understand why people moved on from it. But I new it deserved better, so I revamped it for my second release, Sweater Weather. I gave it a much more powerful open, I sped it up just a tad, and I threw in some new synth solos, to really drive the point home that this is all about badass sweaty dudes with camo paint on their faces. I grew up in a military family loving action movies, so I spent plenty of time running through the woods playing "army" so I knew I wanted to make a track worthy of being in Commando. Man I love that movie.

"Redux!" That was the first time I heard your music, and the Commando vibe is unmistakable. I'm still waiting for the VSD ode to Predator, though. You could call it "Get to the Choppah."

No, I think I'd call it "Puddle of Mud" just to throw people off.

Another thing I enjoy about your music is that it doesn't align neatly with any one of synthwave's dominant tropes, like "retro cyberpunk" or "teen romance." Instead you cover a range of references and approaches, even on a single release. At the same time, there's an unmistakable VSD sound. Conveying a range of aesthetic interests while cultivating a signature sound is no easy task. How do you pull it off?

Completely by accident. I'm not "aligned with a trope" because I can't be that consistent. I rarely sit down and go "OK, I'm going to write an action song!" Cause it always comes out forced. Most of the time I fiddle through presets for an hour until something grabs me, then I build on that. A lot of the time it feels like the song itself wants to be something. Like I'm just digging up something that already exists. I often just feel like I'm along for the ride. A few months ago I noticed I had a few songs and ideas that feel along two paths, so I thought to myself "I can make these two EPs, and actually have a themed EP! Like the pros do! SO I continued with that plan, but I've been stuck for a month now cause saying "I need to write this kind of song" to fill out an EP has me sapped for motivation. My brain has a really hard time working that way. The fact that I have a "sound" is immensely gratifying to hear, as I think most artists are unable to really know what their sound is, or even if they have one. The way people hear your music can be completely different than what you intended.

A lot of our readers are fans of science fiction, fantasy, role-playing games--you know, geek culture in general. And synthwave arguably fits into that category too. How would you describe the connection between this music and broader geek culture? In general or in specific reference to your own music.

You know, I've always felt like geek culture, and this is especially true today, is not so much a discrete culture, but just pop culture in overdrive. Anyone can enjoy a good sci-fi movie, but we're the ones that want to fully understand the universe it's set in, and create a board game, a graphic novel series, and a pen and paper RPG set in it. We want to bathe in it. In the same way, synthwave is just the 80s in overdrive. We're not actually interested in recreating the REAL 1980s. We want to recreate what our memories tell us it was. The distilled, hyperreal version of the 80s. And a lot of sci-fi and fantasy is similar. Look at Blade Runner. There's not a normal street in the whole movie. Everything is wet and lit by neon. People are holding umbrellas with fluorescent lights in them. It's ridiculous, but we love it. So synthwave has that same feel. Soaked in aesthetic. Just drenched with it. And of course, it's also referencing all those movies to, so it has a doubling down effect.

What other groups or artists are you into these days?

Hello Meteor is my go to. When I don't know quite what I want to listen to, but I know I want it to be good, Hello Meteor is it.

I'm obsessed with Oscillian's Shakedown EP. It's like he mainlined Harold Faltermeyer, and it's just so perfect. And Brandon is another one I listen to a lot lately. His debut EP, Neon Haze, is a ridiculously good foot to start on. He's got great songwriting skills, not to mention his production is stellar.

How about your upcoming projects—I think I heard something about a Valentine's Day release...

Yes, I've got a romance themed EP, set to come out in time for VD Day. V Day. Sorry. I've got another one after that that I'm pretty excited about. Not to say I'm not excited about the V Day EP, I'm just stuck working on it right now, so I'm less happy with it.

For all the fellow producers out there, I've got to ask: what kind of gear/software do you use?

I use Reaper for my DAW. Got tired of paying for Pro Tools over and over again and checked out Reaper and was blown away. Never looked back. I use pretty much all stock plugins for mixing, save reverbs. The stock plugins in Reaper sound great and are easy to use. You can actually get them as a free plugin suite if you're on PC. Use them in whatever VST supporting DAW you want.

I work entirely in the box. Software synths, drum samples, amp simulators. I actually have my DAW set up within Dropbox so I can hop between my desktop and my laptop seamlessly. I can start writing a song while on the train, and then when I get home, I can hop on my desktop and it's right there, just as it was on my laptop. It's a pretty awesome workflow. If this intrigues anyone, feel free to find me and ask questions.

My favorite softsynths are Synth1, and OP-X Pro II. Synth1 is free, and the stock bank is cheesy, so a lot of people write it off, but it's so easy to work with once you understand the signal flow, and I've been able to make some great sounds with it. OP-X Pro II is an Oberheim ripoff, and it sounds great, and has a million amazing presets to start from. So good for basses and leads. They sound huge.

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012. 

Stranger Things: A New Dramatic Animal?

Within two days of Stranger Things appearing on Netflix, I had three separate friends reach out to tell me they'd binge-watched it and I had to see it. That I would love it.

So I did. And I did. But...

I want to be very clear at the outset and say this isn't a review. I'm not going to say bad things about Stranger Things, and I'm going to try to avoid spoilers. What I'm really interested in is more of a formal analysis.

One of the biggest appeals of Stranger Things is its retro-80s vibe. I mean, just look at this poster! It's amazing. 

And that font, which looked out at me from the cover of so many Stephen King paperbacks as a kid gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies. By the end of the first episode, I was hooked. But I turned to my wife and said, "If Hopper winds up in the Black Lodge at the end of this thing, I'm going to be pissed."

See, Stranger Things doesn't just have a retro poster and a retro vibe, it actually seems to be made up of Lego bricks taken from 80s and early-90s touchstones. It's really not enough to say that it's "inspired" by E.T., Twin Peaks, Akira, The X-Files, and the music of John Carpenter. It appears to actually be constructed of those things. There are moments lifted directly from E.T., dynamics transposed whole cloth from Twin Peaks, a key character and plotline from Akira, and at one point there was a scene so reminiscent of Stephen King's It that I was able to tell my wife what was going to happen before it played out onscreen. 

I love all of those movies and stories. Seeing them all in one place was pretty cool. But I felt an odd pull I've never experienced before — part of me felt that warm, familiar nerd glow of spotting references from beloved hallmarks I grew up with, but I felt a difference between spotting the posters for Evil Dead and The Thing on the walls in characters' rooms, and saying "oh, this scene is from..."

Now here, to me, is the really interesting thing: this is a Netflix show, and with the exception of Akira, every other work I've mentioned here has been available for streaming on Netflix. Netflix was very clear when it launched House of Cards, its first original, scripted show, that its programming decisions were based on user viewing patterns. So it's probably safe to assume that people are watching the hell out of E.T., The X-Files, and Twin Peaks on Netflix. And maybe Netflix's development team said, "Can we get a show that's just all of those things, but a mini-series?"

This could be a one-off thing, or it could be a harbinger of a new phenomenon that is a direct result of the time we're living in. With viewership metrics available on a level like nothing we've ever seen before,  the slow demise of the traditional network television model, and a trend toward limited series, rather than 22-episode-per-season non-serialized dramas or comedies, there is a very real possibility that Stranger Things is something like a new narrative form. The G referred to it in conversation as a bricolage, which may be correct. Or a four-dimensional version of Picasso's early experiments with collage. 

I suppose part of me is fighting the urge to be dismissive about a work that in some ways lacks originality, but the fact that I really enjoyed it is telling. I think it will be interesting to see where this goes. I argued in 2013 that Breaking Bad was the signature show of our time not just because of its content and narrative qualities, but because of the way it used streaming services and social media to expand its audience and change viewing patterns. Maybe something similar is happening right now.

Maybe we'll have a Western to look forward to where a Civil War veteran with deep hatred of the Comanche (The Searchers) gets wind of a coming confrontation, and when he can't get anyone in town to stand with him (High Noon), he must confront his racism out of desperation and recruit a team of seven Comanche braves to help him defend the town (Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven). Who knows? 

Also, I'm available for meetings, if anybody wants to talk about setting up that project...

Posted by Vance K - co-editor and cult film reviewer at nerds of a feather since 2012. Netflix subscriber since 2004.

NERD MUSIC GIVEAWAY: Pacific Coast EP by The G

Many readers will have noticed we've expanded our coverage in recent months to touch on the spaces where music overlaps with those areas of geek culture we've covered since the blog's inception. It will likely not come as a surprise, then, to discover that as a group of contributors, we're a musical bunch. A solid plurality of all the writers that have contributed to NoaF have or have had musical projects of their own.

Nerds of a Feather founder and co-editor The G is no exception, and he's making a few digital download codes for his debut synthwave EP Pacific Coast available to readers. Since its release, I've had this thing in the headphones a number of times while I've gone for runs, and it's a pretty cool collection of songs.

We've written about some performers or bands that sing about nerd-adjacent themes or the experience of being into interests that most people consider outside of the mainstream, but the cool thing about synthwave and this EP is that it wears its geeky bona fides on its sleeve, woven right into the music itself. Growing up in the 80s and having a new batch of songs that evoke the synth soundscapes of movies, shows, and games that I loved as a kid while still being something new is a lot of fun.


The Giveaway

The G is giving away three digital download codes (via bandcamp) of the Pacific Coast EP. Winners will then be able to download the EP in the digital format of their choosing, as well as stream the EP from the bandcamp page (or app) without restrictions. To enter, just leave a comment here telling us what your favorite 80s movie is--and why!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, and singer/guitarist in the alt-folk band Sci-Fi Romance.

Microreview [film]: Kung Fury

Swedish steel.

Like Turbo Kid, which I reviewed last week, Kung Fury is a parody of/homage to the low-rent action films of the '80s. Only this one's much heavier on the irony. See, for example, the plot:

Sometime in the early 1980s, Miami-Dade Police Department detective Kung Fury and his partner Dragon apprehend a red ninja in a back alley, but Dragon is sliced in half by the ninja while Kung Fury is suddenly struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra, giving him extraordinary kung fu powers that enable him to defeat his foe. Years later in 1985, after defeating a rogue arcade machine robot, Kung Fury quits the force when he is assigned to partner with Triceracop, fearing that he would lose another partner in the line of duty. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler, a.k.a. "Kung Führer", enters the timeline and remotely guns down the police chief and attacks the precinct through a mobile phone. Intent to avenge the chief, Kung Fury has computer whiz Hackerman send him back in time to kill Hitler in Nazi Germany. A glitch in the system, however, sends him back into the Viking Age. After Kung Fury meets the Viking valkyries Barbarianna and Katana, the Norse god Thor sends him to Nazi Germany for him to finish his job.

Or consider the fact that Kung Fury (Sandberg) opens the doors to his Lamborghini Countach by shooting it. Or the scene where two Nazi guardsmen argue, in fake German (it's really Swedish) over who has the more Aryan mustache. Or the VHS glitch effects that periodically reappear. Or the fucking amazing Mitch Murder soundtrack, which features David Hasselhoff on vocals:

Indeed, Kung Fury may be the ultimate film for that certain kind of person who both seeks out a certain kind of ironic humor and enjoys a bit of '80s nostalgia--ironically, of course. For others Kung Fury may lay the insanity on a bit thick. Personally, I thought it was funny as hell, but also noted that, in comparison to Turbo Kid (and the comparison is inevitable), it's a pretty superficial film. And that was even more apparent second time I watched it, when all the surprises had already been sprung. 

At the same time, Kung Fury is only 30-minutes long, which is just about perfect for what is, in essence, a superbly well done one-note symphony. Oh, and Kung Fury's partner, Triceracop? Yes, he is an anthropomorphic triceratops--something that remains thankfully unexplained. 

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for the concept of Triceracop; +1 for the amazing soundtrack: +1 for TOTAL INSANITY.

Penalties: -1 for the moment when the joke starts to get a bit old. 

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. "Well worth your time and attention."


***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012.

Reference: Kung Fury, directed by David Sandberg [Laser Unicorns/Lamprey, 2015]

Microreview [film]: Turbo Kid

Back to the future

Turbo Kid is another entry in the semiserious/semi-ironic '80s retro movement linking artists working across multiple media. This one, specifically, is a cinematic homage to the cheap Mad Max ripoffs that only ever seemed to play at the one surviving drive-in left in town, but took up significant real estate at your local video store. I remember, at a young age, holding the fat laminated boxes--marveling at the disfigured faces of post-apocalyptic mutants and foam spike armor of the inevitable raiders, wondering what thrills I might receive if my parents would just let me rent something with that much gore. But when that glorious day arrived, I would inevitably realize, as Peter Sobczynski notes, that these were films whose boxes "always promised more than they ever came close to delivering."

This is the story of the Kid (Munro Chambers), a teenager who rides his bike across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of 1997, scavenging junk to trade for water. While out in the field, he meets Apple (Laurence Lebouef), a very manic pixie dream girl who follows the Kid to his hideout and, through her irrepressible joie de vivre (this is a French-Canadian production, after all), wins over the initially suspect Kid.

Then shit starts to go south. Local badman Zeus (Michael Ironsides) first kidnaps the area protector, Kiwi cowboy and arm-wrestling champion Frederick (Aaron Jeffery), then Apple. All seems lost when, in the midst of trying to escape Apple's kidnappers, the Kid discovers an underground military vessel left over from humanity's catastrophic war with the robots (i.e. the apocalyptic event). Inside there is a jump suit complete with a Nintendo Power Glove, which--if fully charged--can instantly disintegrate a human being. He goes to save Apple (who it turns out can take care of herself quite ably), and in the process sets up a confrontation with Zeus and his gang of foam spike clad marauders.

Standard '80s B-movie fare, right? On the surface, yes--and Turbo Kid does a good job of reinterpreting its source material with a good balance of satire and appreciation for what makes grindhouse film fun to watch--not least of which the hilariously over-the-top gore, which gets more and more absurd as the film goes on. Oh, and it sports a phenomenal soundtrack by synthwave group Le Matos.

What makes Turbo Kid really stand out, though, is its emotional core--propelled by its central relationships, and especially the friendship between the Kid and Apple, which is surprisingly heartfelt and affecting. In the end, Turbo Kid isn't really about action or '80s nostalgia--it's about lonely people finding friendship, and here it doesn't play for laughs, winks or nudges. Sure, Apple starts off as your standard manic pixie dream girl (albeit extra manic), while the Kid doesn't even merit a name; still, by the end of the film I realized how deeply invested I'd become in what happens to them--in a way I rarely am with unserious films made after 1990.

I guess that's the thing about '80s culture that people in 2016 find so attractive, whether we're talking action schlock, John Hughes romances or the digital keyboard sounds used by Billy Ocean--there's a sincerity about all of it, even when that sincerity is corny as hell. And Turbo Kid does a fantastic job capturing that. It's funny and silly, but also distinctly bittersweet, and deeply romantic. Just as importantly, Turbo Kid is the kind of film you can't wait to watch again.


The Math

Baseline Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for the highly resonant emotional core of the film, which is what separates it from other attempts to pull of this kind of thing; +1 for the fantastic Le Matos soundtrack, which really accentuates everything the director is going for.

Penalties: -1 for the first 10-15 minutes of the film, which are a bit awkward relative to the rest. '

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10. "Very high quality/standout in its category."

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and Nerds of a
Feather founder/administrator, since 2012.

Reference: Turbo Kid, directed by Simard, Whissell and Whissell [Epic Pictures, 2015]

Microreview [video game]: GALAK-Z: The Dimensional by 17-Bit

Pressing the Right Buttons (If You're the Right Person)

I didn't finish this game. Let's get this stated right from the start because, to some people, not finishing the game means you can't provide a well-rounded opinion of it. If you're one of those people, please stop reading. I wanted to finish it, I did! But there's a point where timeliness and necessity intersect. Would my opinion change about the game if I put in three times as much time as I already have to get to the end credits? In some cases, sure, but I don't think this is the case with GALAK-Z. It's made for replayability. The gameplay is why it exists, not the story or end goal.

GALAK-Z's influences are extremely obvious, right from the start, and they hit a lot of nostalgia buttons for me. It's a blend of arcade gaming, Macross, Voltron, and some Halo. When it starts, it looks like an arcade cabinet booting up. You control a space ship that can transform into a robot. The levels are all randomly generated, with a randomly selected objective, and they're delivered in groups of five episodes (levels) per season. Each season ends with a boss fight and some story narrative. It's all very Saturday morning TV. Nostalgia is what works best in this game.

What works second best is that replayable gameplay loop. In order to finish each episode, there are enemies and environmental hazards everywhere. This is where the Halo influences come in. It looks like a twin-stick shooter, but your ship is more survivable, and so are the enemies. Movement is extremely important, as you can face, shoot, and move in any direction, but you can also jump over shots and enemies. Enemies are numerous and you will die repeatedly. In "Rogue" difficulty (the default), death means you start the season over. Everything you've found and unlocked is wiped clean, with some minor exceptions.

In a Rogue Legacy twist, there's an item shop between episodes and you can find blueprints, which make upgrades available in that item shop. You can also find permanent upgrades that survive death. There is also a currency that you find by destroying enemies and it can give you either more credit in your next life, or another attempt at an episode you failed. In Rogue difficulty, early levels are spent gathering as many upgrades and credits as you can, because failure means you don't lose much. When you're three or four episodes deep, you get a lot more cautious so that you don't lose an entire season over a bad decision. In "Arcade" difficulty, you don't lose an entire season over death, just the current episode you're on. The difficulty hasn't changed, but the punishment for failure is less harsh.

It's this punishment that brings me to my love/hate relationship with GALAK-Z. I love everything that it's doing. It's nailing a lot of little design stuff in games that I think is great. It's a difficult game, and it's a rewarding game, but it hurts to lose so often. I'm a fairly determined person, who wants to see a game to the end, and I'm not sure I've got what it takes to ever finish GALAK-Z. It doesn't feel like it's unfair or completely random, but I've had seasons end in one dumb move. The levels are short so it's not hard to catch back up, but when I do complete a season, it feels less like I'm doing well, and more like I'm getting lucky. Even the Arcade difficulty isn't much of a saving grace because it means you get to beat your head against the same level over and over until you push through, or give up and start a new run in the hopes that you get better upgrades next time.

I never made it more than 15 minutes into any particular run on Rogue Legacy. By contrast, I've finished almost two seasons of GALAK-Z, out of five. GALAK-Z is a lot of fun, but you have to either be great at it, or a glutton for punishment if you expect to get anywhere. You almost have to love GALAK-Z to want to see it through to the end, or else you might not have the commitment it needs to get you there. It's a well thought-out design that is going to press buttons for the right people, and completely turn off a lot of others.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 great, 80's anime look and feel, +1 perfect controls

Penalties: -3 high punishment for failure necessitates either great skill or long commitment

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10 (still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: 17-Bit. GALAK-Z: The Dimensional [17-Bit, 2015] 

Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time Tournament - Results!

"Hey, but everybody wins, right? Or me, I guess. I win.."

Guys, are you sure?

The smart money — and by that I mean the opinion expressed by most people who commented on this tournament on- and offline — said that this tournament was a race to second, because after early rounds it seemed clear that The Empire Strikes Back was a lock for the number one spot. But, as they say in actual sports, that's why they play the games.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time, as decided by the Nerds of a Feather readers who participated in this tournament (and proud we are of all of them):

BLADE RUNNER

I wonder what it was. See, Star Wars has an unequaled fan base. But many readers, guests, and commentators on this blog seem to believe that the Star Wars films aren't, in fact, science fiction. More like "fantasy in space." Could be. As our own English Scribbler said to me, maybe the purists won. But one thing is damn certain, we all win when we watch Roy Batty's final scene.



Posted by Vance K — who wishes he could see anything off the shoulder of Orion.

Greatest Sci-Fi Movie of All Time Tournament (Finals)

I'm pleased that Metropolis made such a valiant showing, but there's no shame, I believe, in losing to Blade Runner. I'm also quite proud of the voters for not letting the second and third films of the Matrix Trilogy negatively impact their voting on the original, which was truly a groundbreaking cinematic experience.

The All-Harrison Ford Finals are probably a shoo-in for Empire, let's face it, but I find Blade Runner being here interesting. If I may: most people are well-versed in the saga of getting the Blade Runner edit right. Originally released in 1982, with a voice over by Harrison Ford that is universally derided, it wasn't until a decade later that the "Director's Cut" came out. It was subsequently revealed that it wasn't really Ridley Scott's final cut, so in 2007 they released the "Final Cut." Nerds of a Feather founder The G and I attended a screening of the Final Cut together when it was released. I remember walking out of the theater thinking that it was certainly the best version of the movie, but it was still a movie plagued by what might've been. It's clear in the final cut what everybody was going for, but there was still a certain looseness in some of the seams. So in a way, Blade Runner is a movie about possibility — a movie with some good performances, some great performances, and some transcendent moments, that still somehow hints that it could've been even more if only...

Maybe that's why it's made it this far, and yet will certainly fall before The Empire Strikes Back. As fans of imagination and speculation, somehow the promise of Blade Runner speaks to us in a way almost nothing else can.

Or maybe I ramble. Either way, off to the voting!

Results will post next Friday. Happy voting, and if there are any movies from this tournament you've never seen, treat yourself! They're all here for a reason.

Posted by Vance K — cult film aficionado and nerds of a feather co-editor since 2012, who couldn't be more proud of a blog that just turned three this month, and has such cute, chubby cheeks.